Help! Son scoring very low on assignments!

Well, I am pretty upset. I have not been checking my 10 year old son's scores daily, as I guess I should have been. I have just been asking him how he has been doing. He has been telling me he is doing well. But tonight I looked at his scores, and many of them are 75% or below! In LA and Math. The Science portion says N/A. They don't give grades in that I guess?

I don't know what to do exactly. It is late and I am very upset. Wish I hadn't looked at the scores at this time of night, but I was coming up with my homeschool schedule for this year in the nice peace and quiet. I didn't realize it would be this bad. He is failing several of the math lessons and making mostly 70's and 80's in LA. He is 10 and I have him on 4th grade level. Help please!!! Have I been giving him too much freedom without enough supervision or what? I know he has issues with comprehension AND with math, but I am just not sure what to do. He really likes this program and has been telling me that he does. Hmmm...

On the other hand, my 8 year old son is doing great, all A's pretty much on his. Also my will soon be 5 year old is doing great too. Help.

I can only tell you what I'd do. I'd talk to my son about it. Ask him why and what is up. I'd ask him what he needed to improve. Then I'd give it to him. He'd have to go back, maybe quite a ways, and do it all over again and I'd be checking daily. I'd probably sit with him through some things as well. At least as a homeschooler you have a lot of freedom and flexibility to get it all worked through.

My nine year old son is like that if I am not right there with him. He has even gotten as low as 15% on some lessons. Then when I sit beside he he will get 100 on the same lesson. He just does not do the work if I'm not right beside him. I have my son re do any lesson that he got less than 85 on. He doesn't like it but I have explained to him that it's important for him to understand what he is doing. A score less than 80 tells me he doesn't really understand it. Maybe he really doesn't understand the lesson. Then it would help having you sit down with him and discussing it.

#2 If he has a terrible score, look at how long he spent on the activity and the quiz. Sometimes the simple explanation is that, if he knows you are not checking daily, he may be rushing through the material. The time spent should give you a clue.

#3 If he is spending just a few minutes on the lessons, then have him work through the lessons again. Then, sit with him while he does the quiz just in case there is something else going on. If he is having a difficult time while you are sitting there, click quit and go through the lesson with him before he retakes the quiz.

OR

#3 If the score is low, but he spent sufficient time on the activities leading up to the quiz, sit with him and have him retake the quiz. Maybe he rushed the quiz or didn't understand some wording. Sitting with him through the retake should help. If he is having a difficult time while you are sitting there, click quit and go through the lesson with him before he retakes the quiz.

At 10yo he may be testing you. OTOH- he may genuinely be having trouble and didn't want to tell you. Either way, I would go through steps #2 and #3 for all the 10 question quizzes where he scored below 80% starting at the beginning.

Thank you for all your thoughts and suggestions. They are very helpful. This morning I had a conversation with him and showed him his quiz scores etc, privately in a room where we could talk away from the 2 other children. He said he was going to really try harder and do better. I think he has been rushing through the readings not realizing that he was failing. When I told him that if he missed 4, that means he failed, he was shocked! I think that did jar him and help him to wake up and not want to do that. So today, he went in his room alone to do his LA and Science and came back with perfect score on Science and only missing 2 on LA. When he took a quiz in LA, he came downstairs and kind of read through several of them aloud to me and worked them out in his head this way. He only missed 2 doing that. He did say that he is struggling with the math, so I am also going to have him go back and start doing 1 lesson on his Teaching Textbooks math CD for 4th grade that he did last year but hasn't finished yet. He really did well with that one, and he says he understands it better because the guy on the computer talks him through it.

I suspect that he does have a learning block of some type. This is my gut instinct, but I also feel that he does need more one on one attention academically from me. I really wanted him to be more independent academically, and that is why I thought T4L would be great. But I see that I need to be more actively involved in it as well. I think he just isn't concentrating enough, and I think being alone when he reads and does the LA will really help him. Also when he reads the quizzes out loud to me. He likes doing that for some reason. Always does much better that way. I am pretty sure he has ADHD tendencies, although I don't want to label him...probably gets it from me mostly.

I think I am going to tell him that if he scores below an 80% that he will have to redo the lesson. But when I printed out the report sheet last night, I could only see Quiz scores, not lesson scores. It just said N/A. What am I doing wrong?

A little late coming to this party, but I've been to it before with my own son. We've done several things to help improve his scores, most of which Mandy suggested above. But I did have to go back to sitting with him for a few lessons to make sure he's focusing and doesn't have any problems. Now, when he does his work, I don't sit over his shoulder, but we work in teh same room, so that I am available if he needs anything. Let us know how its working out

As far as the lesson scores, not all of them have grades, but you might want to make sure that he is going all teh way through them.

But when I printed out the report sheet last night, I could only see Quiz scores, not lesson scores. It just said N/A. What am I doing wrong?

Think of those lessons/activities as lectures, notes and textbook. When you would sit in class and listen to the teacher, when you would look over your lesson notes or read what the teacher wrote on the chalkboard, or when you would read through your textbook, those things didn't receive an objective grade like a test or quiz. Obviously, paying attention with those things usually leads to higher grades on tests and quizzes. If this is the first time your child has used this method of learning, you may need to model for him how it works.

(Some teachers may have given a grade for class paritcipation, but that was most often a subjective grade. FWIW, there is no rule that says you can't average in a grade for class participation into your child's final grade.)

Run duration reports and determine how long he is spending on science and social studies. In 4th grade these two subjects have very little animation/ oral presentation and thus are like reading an online textbook that contains fill-in-the-blank exercises. You know how long it takes him to read for understanding. Is he spending sufficient time? Also, is he keeping a notebook for these two subjects? Both subjects will contain suggestions for things to write in a notebook. Is he printing out all availble flashcards and any other printed material that is available and studying it? Is he doing the science experiments that are suggested and notebooking them? What you can see in his notebook will give you another clue as to class participation. If he is only interacting with the material by reading through the information online, then he may not be remembering it for the test.

T4L is a curriculum. In that regard it is a tool for you to use in whatever way works best for your family. Ultimately curriculum is a tool that is not meant to replace a teacher, but to be guided by one.

Are you aware he can work a year above and a year below within each subject? If he is struggling in math, he can go a level and work there on areas of trouble and continue working on level in areas he is doing fine in. The top right of each screen should have the three grade levels. You can click on the one you need. Hope this makes sense.

Going down a level is a great thing to do if he is struggling. As far as the grades, like Mandy said, not every lesson is graded. I do know that there is a computer glitch that is being addressed right now. It is possible that is what is happening to some of his grades. Give it a few days and then see if all of the grades show up or not.